Warren G. Harding didn’t tweet.

He didn’t sit in a gold-plated tower and hurl taunts.

Instead, he lobbed insults at his enemies from his busted office above a pool hall—armed with nothing but a printing press, a cheap cigar, and a thesaurus full of polite ways to call someone a swindler.

At 19, Harding scraped together enough money to buy a struggling newspaper: Marion Daily Star. He then turned it into a thriving podium for Midwestern grit.

(Now? It’s a Gannett clone—USA Today in Ohio drag. Sad!)

The story you're told about Harding? He was a mediocre president. Corrupt. Lazy. More interested in poker games and mistresses than policy.

What they don’t tell you is this: he was basically Trump’s ghostwriter.

Put a different way…

Trump is Just Harding with WiFi

In 1921, inflation was roaring. The debt was unpayable. The country had just gotten over a war and a pandemic. The cities were swollen with the unemployed.

Wall Street wanted easy money. Europe wanted U.S. guarantees. The League of Nations beckoned. The press and academia were firmly on Team Globe.

Enter Harding.

He campaigned on this:

• "America First."
• Tariffs as weapons of sovereignty.
• Industrial independence as a matter of national security.
• A deep distrust of global entanglements, utopian global governance pushers, and transnational saviors.

Harding didn’t tweet “build the wall,” but he did sign the Emergency Quota Act in 1921. He didn’t wage tariff wars on TikTok, but he did launch the Emergency Tariff of 1921 and backed the Fordney–McCumber Tariff—both aimed at protecting American farmers and factories from the flood of cheap foreign goods after WWI.

His slogan? “Return to Normalcy.”

Once in office, he slashed spending by 50% (much of it post war demobilization, but still), cut top tax rates, fired waves of federal workers, and let the market chew through the wreckage of war and inflation. And just like that, the economy boomed. America roared into the '20s.

BUT…

Harding’s policies may have worked for a bit, his presidency ended in tragedy.

The Teapot Dome scandal buried his legacy in oil and graft. His Attorney General—installed by a backroom deal—turned the Justice Department into a vending machine for bribes.

Harding was horrified by the corruption that had grown around him. He wanted to clean house. He never got the chance.

He died in a hotel in San Francisco.

(One author suspected his wife killed him by poisoning his clam chowder. Curiously, she refused an autopsy and burned his personal letters.)

Now fast forward.

The Pendulum Always Swings

2020 hit. 

We print $7 trillion in 24 months. Zero rates. PPP loans. Stimmies. Zombie companies. The Everything Bubble.

Then inflation shows up—just like it did in 1919.

Powell hiked fast. Wall Street screamed. Every meme-stock kid on Robinhood went quiet.

Look at the parallels:

So what’s the lesson? The pendulum always swings.

Empires always overreach. Debt always explodes. The gods of money grow fat on false confidence.

Deadwood builds up.

Whether it's Harding or Trump, doesn't matter. Names change. The cycle doesn't. The fire comes anyway… with or without their help.

But after the fire is the most interesting part.

After the flush in the 1920s, America exploded with innovation. Electrification. Radio. Automobiles. Motion pictures. Aviation. Skyscrapers. Neon. Jazz.

Our version? Crypto, AI, robotics, automated manufacturing, new forms of energy. The tools have changed, but the arc remains the same.

Everyone’s looking backward or freaking out.

Meanwhile, the real builders are quietly front-running the next boom.

If you’re looking for signals…

Don’t watch what’s burning.

Watch what grows stronger through disorder. Then double down on it.